Meanings of White and Black in English and Serbian Idioms: A Contrastive Analysis
Meanings of White and Black in English and Serbian Idioms: A Contrastive Analysis

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with the meanings of two colour terms, namely English white and black and Serbian beo and crn. A contrastive analysis of the two pairs of adjectives is based on a corpus of 35 English and Serbian phrasal and clausal idioms, like Two blacks do not make a white in English and Od dva zla ne može ispasti dobro in Serbian. The main aim of the research is to point to stylistic and semantic aspects of two colour categories, white and black, in English and Serbian idioms. More specific aims deal with the meanings these colour categories express in the process of describing human characteristics, both mental characteristics and appearance, as well as determining whether such meanings are identical or similar in two contrasted languages. The analysis shows, furthermore, there is a high degree of correspondence between the two contrasted languages in respect of the expression of meanings of white/beo and black/crn which are culturally accepted in both languages.

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